Annual Program Reports

About Urban Sites Network

Established in 1988, the Urban
Sites Network (USN) connected teachers and writing project leaders
nationwide to work on improving the teaching and learning of
urban children. USN focused on teacher inquiry and professional development, while encouraging teachers to share promising classroom practices with each other through conferences, retreats, online forums,
and minigrant programs.

Goals

To strengthen urban writing projects sites, particularly new and rebuilding sites, in order to tackle the critical
concerns of urban schools

To grow, support, and sustain diverse teacher leadership pools in urban writing project sites and urban schools in general

To increase awareness of the ways that teaching
and learning are inseparably linked to race, class, gender, language, culture, and social justice

To identify and analyze the significance of urban
contexts on student achievement and the achievement gap

To stem the tide of urban teacher attrition by supporting the unique needs of new teachers in urban schools.

Background

Supported by the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, USN completed an initial three-year
project in 1994 to create inquiry groups at NWP sites in eleven cities. This project
successfully evolved its own philosophy and techniques for teacher
inquiry, paying special attention to issues of race and ethnicity,
connections to school reform, and relationships between
universities and schools based on research issues.

In addition, the project actively encouraged leadership by teachers of
color at all levels of participation and created opportunities
for USN teachers to communicate across sites. Following this
three-year initiative, urban sites teachers completed a first volume of inquiry
studies that was published in a book, Cityscapes: Eight Views from the Urban Classroom.